Last week, a dairy farmer near Maurice, Iowa held an open house allowing more than 1,500 visitors to tour his dairy farm facilities.
Dairy producers, dairy processors, and dairy specialists from Iowa State University, University of Nebraska, Kansas State, and South Dakota State along with others with an interest in the dairy industry have been focusing attention on expanding the dairy business.
Lee Maassen, of Maassen Dairy Farms, says the area between Kansas City and Fargo is seeing a
resurgence of dairy cow herds, and an expansion in the processing facilities.
«If you want to have a dairy that is sustainable in the future, you need a number of infrastructure items that need to be in place, from a natural resource, water, land availability, product, dairy cows, all the way to dairy processing,» says Maassen. «You need all the infrastructure from beginning to end. We in the Midwest do have that, and we have an abundant resource of that.»
Maassen believes within the next ten years people will notice some major changes within the area.
«So we are seeing, I think a comeback to the I-29 corridor, of dairymen coming to this area of the U.S. because of that,» says Maassen. «I think nobody knows what the crystal ball is for sure, but, I think over the next ten years, we’ll probably see an impact of the dairy business growing in this Midwest I-29 corridor.»
Maassen identifies California and Arizona as possible regions that may see the dairy industry slow down, or even leave, simply because those states may not be able to sustain the growth over the long-term.
«There’s places in the USA, California, large urban areas that have water quality issues and some water shortage issues, and also land resource availability, and feed stuffs and the availability to raise feed for animals,» says Maassen. «So we have all those resources here, so I think we are going to be seeing from a sustainability standpoint, and from an efficiency standpoint, of producing milk and a high quality product, that the dairy industry is probably going to comeback to the Midwest.»
People can start to see some of the expansion already take place within this area. This region already has the dairy processing infrastructure in place with companies such as Dean Foods in Le Mars and Sioux Falls, AMPI in Sanborn, Iowa; and Freeman, South Dakota; and New Ulm, Minnesota; Robert’s and Hiland which are located in Omaha and Kansas City, Schwan’s in Marshall, Minnesota; and Well’s Enterprises with its facilities located in Le Mars.
Source: Siouxland
Link: http://www.siouxlandmatters.com/news/local-news/ag-report-dairy-industry-expanding
